#working class fashion

[thespliffbunker]

[stardew-bajablast]

if you haven’t at least tried sewing or crocheting or knitting your own clothes, you really should. even if it’s just one time and you never do it again, i really think everyone should do it at least once

learning how to crochet was what finally made me grasp the abject horror of the fast fashion industry and realize just how laborious and time consuming it is. i have to take a few days off a week so my back/wrists don’t get sore — and i get to do this as a leisure activity in the comfort of my own home, rather than in a sweatshop. it takes dozens of hours to produce a single item. there is just something about trying it yourself that makes you realize just how little the people making our clothes are being paid for retailers to be able to sell clothes at such obscenely low prices.

i understood in the abstract that people were earning literal slave wages to make my clothes, but that concept wasn’t real to me in a way i could understand until i spent 14 hours making something that i myself wouldn’t have even been willing to pay more than $10-20 for if i saw it in a store.

i have not bought any new clothes since learning how to crochet. every time i see clothes at a store (especially obviously handmade items like crochet), and i look at the price tag i feel genuinely sick to my stomach.

i’m not saying everyone needs to make their own clothes in order to be against fast fashion, but what i am saying is if hearing about the conditions and wages secondhand has not been enough to make you stop buying it, if you find yourself becoming desensitized to the suffering of the people who make your things, you should try making something yourself.

you need to see firsthand how physically and mentally demanding it can be and imagine how much worse it would be if you were forced to sit in a sweatshop for 16 hours a day doing it nonstop, earning pennies an hour to do so. you need to spend weeks laboring over something only for it to turn out looking like shit so you realize just how much wisdom and technical skill goes into these supposedly “unskilled” and undervalued jobs. if the abstract concept isn’t enough to get through to you, then you need to get hands on.

[ffcrazy15]

Someone needs to do an analysis on the way the Kung Fu Panda movies use old-fashioned vs. modern language ("Panda we meet at last"/"Hey how's it going") and old-fashioned vs. modern settings (forbidden-city-esque palaces/modern-ish Chinese restaurant) to indicate class differences in their characters, and how those class differences create underlying tensions and misunderstandings.

[bacchuschucklefuck]

and! barbarian!fig! its her

[marzipanandminutiae]

I watch a fun IG reel of a maid getting dressed in 1790 vs. 1890. it's great! both maids are in practical, period-typical outfits with a few simple aesthetic touches because Humans Like Looking Good regardless of social class. you can tell they are maids because they put clearly functional aprons on, and the 1890s one is wearing a uniform-style cap. also the caption says they are. love it

I scroll down

the top comment: "but what did POOR women wear? you only ever show rich people's clothes!"

[mourntomidnight]

Tbh I think the fast fashion conversation should involve poor ppl but not in any way in the form of shaming but more like: “you are being taken advantage of by large corporations that have women and children enslaved to make crappy clothes in excessive amounts that have literal lead that will damage ur body in serious ways that ur pressured to buy via influencers that form a parasocial relationship with you and don’t care about you to overconsume them in large amounts that won’t last and have to be thrown away at some point and all that ends up fucking the environment. Plus, the cycle of consumerism is damaging to ur finances to keep u in poverty and mental health of always wanting more but never satisfied.”

I am saying right now you don’t need to throw out fast fashion items you currently own, if they fall apart, they can be repurposed. I am also saying I’ve been guilty of shopping fast fashion but am also making a commitment to eliminate fast fashion purchases and mindset in my life. The root cause of these fast fashion corpos to keep doing what they do is purely based on you buying from them and you, the consumer in this capitalist world, have the power to change that. Obviously there’s little you can do to avoid big oil or buying things made with prison labor without serious direct action but the fashion industry is one that is by design meant to be maintained by mindless consumerism and overconsumption.

If you are poor, please do whatever within ur means to avoid fast fashion, whether it’s buying from thrift stores other than goodwill and just buying less clothes and focusing on more important things in ur life. A better tomorrow is still possible if you allow it.

[clove-pinks]

A Sailor Smoking a Pipe, by Luke Clennell (1781-1840, Scottish).

[newyorkthegoldenage]

A typical day in the Garment District, this one on October 8, 1952, a bustling hub of fashion and manufacturing. The workers who cut, sewed, and pushed endless racks and hand-trucks around the midtown neighborhood were “the living embodiment of New York’s working-class economy, whose sweat and long hours draped the shoulders of the rest of the country,” The New York Times reported in 2012. A stretch of 7th Avenue, between 26th and 42nd Streets, was officially designated “Fashion Avenue” in 1972.

Photo: Sam Falk for the NY Times via Times Instagram

[hirazuki]

Mairon/Sauron (Tolkien) Cosplayer + edits: me Photo credit: justanotherneko_photography Wig: Arda Wigs (Grace, in “Fire Orange”) Contacts: Uniqso (Sweety Crazy Red Demon Eye) Ears: Aradani Costumes (Sun Elf Ears) Fangs: Scarecrow (Classic Deluxe Fangs) Dagger: antique, bought at a bazaar Clothes are my own.

Happy Halloween from your friendly neighborhood necromancer 🦇

[anna-scribbles]

h-how do you ever finish any of your work? genuine question because you seem to be productive despite your agreste syndrome and I need to learn your ways. but also how do you ever finish any of your work

unclear. last night i stayed up and finished a report worth 25% of my grade at about 5am, arrived on time for my 9am lecture, and spent about half of it zoned out while thinking about seventeen year old emilie agreste. and i was one of the most active participants in the class discussion

[justaz]

ballerina marinette lives rent free in my head

[thespliffbunker]

[dresshistorynerd]

Hi! So I’m doing a personal art project on fashion in the 1890s, and I am struggling. Like a lot. I created a Pinterest board of a bunch of 1890s dresses, problem is I’m having a hard time identifying the uses for some of them. I know that a Walking dress is a type of Day Dress but how exactly would one differentiate the two? What exactly would be the physical differences between a Walking dress and a Day dress?

And did everyone have walking dresses? Or was the more of an ‘upper class’ sort of thing?

I understand the struggle. It was quite hard to parse out at first for me too since the Victorian dress etiquette was pretty complex. Fortunately I have made a post about that specifically for 1890s. If it doesn't answer all your question or you want me to specify something, feel free to sent another ask! I used examples from different years of the decade to make it more applicable to the whole decade but it should be remembered that there was changes to the silhouette thorough the decade and every type of dress would be adapted to the shifts in the fashionable silhouette.

Though as I point out in the post it focuses on the upper class. For the working class and to some extent middle glass it was a little different. The working class did not participate in the high society events, but many middle classes could at least to some of them, and working class women worked outside of the house too, while married middle class women generally didn't. Young unmarried middle class women did often work, for example as secretaries and shop assistants in respectable establishments. Working women didn't spend their days receiving guests at tea parties or attending them, so they didn't have tea dresses, nor did they generally have evening gowns which would be required in formal high society events. They might have a dinner dress though if they were well off, which was the least formal of evening gowns. Middle class women would generally have these. Working class and the casual middle class day dress resembled much more the walking dress of the upper classes than their other day dresses. They would have a church dress that would be a little fancier day dress for church and usually even fancier day dress for formal functions, like weddings.

Here's working class women in their work attires that were practical day dresses and aprons usually.

And here's middle class women in fairly similar dresses.

Different types of day dresses

Maybe I should expand more on the differences in day dresses and how walking dress relates, since while I talk about day dress and walking dress separately in the linked post, I don't fully explain the whole day dress thing since I did need to simplify. Day dress was not a specific dress, but quite a broad category of dresses that were used in different situations thorough the day. They are quite hard to differentiate sometimes, mostly because they weren't really that strictly different from one another. To understand why one dress was used in one situation, we need to understand the dresses in the casual to formal scale. Usually casual is looser, more practical, less elaborate and more covering but has shorter hem and the opposite apply to more formal.

When staying at home, people would be in their most casual clothing, but the level of formality would rise when receiving guests. Leaving home would require higher level of formality, but how high would depend on what you were going to do and who would see you doing it. This is why visiting gown is more formal than the dress the hostess would receive their visitor in. Close family members and friends could be casually received outside specific events during the day and a casual house dress or tea dress was acceptable for that. Afternoon tea was an important social event for upper and middle class women, and it would be slightly more formal occasion, but still for family and friends and therefore somewhat casual. Visiting dress were on the formal end of the afternoon dresses, but more casual versions of it could be used to go see a close friend or family member in a more casual way. Carriage dress was worn for open carriage rides, which were social events for the upper class. There they would be seen prominently by their whole community while they socialized in the carriage among their peers. Carriage dress was therefore very formal and elaborate, often had a trail and usually had a cloak as the wind might get cold. Promenade dress was for walks in a park. This was different from an actual walk, as the upper class people would go to a park to be seen and to socialize. Promenade dress was then somewhat formal, though less than most visiting dresses or carriage dress.

Here's first an example of a quite elaborate visiting dress from 1894-95 and then carriage dresses, first image from 1894, second from 1891.

Walking dress was the least formal of the dresses an upper class person might wear outside the house (excluding sports dresses). It was used by upper class people for city walks and traveling, but as I said earlier the practical day dresses of middle and working class were very similar to it. It was practical and simple. It had shorter hem, it was made from sturdy materials, often wool and it was usually tailored. Dress Reform Movement, which was a moment among the first wave feminists, advocated among other things for tailoring in women's clothing, arguing it was more practical. The trend begun in 1880s and it's really most prominent in walking dresses and sports wear of 1890s. Which it why the walking dress typically has a lot of elements from men's fashion. Unlike the other day dresses, which were rarely tailored and had usually just the skirt and the bodice, the walking dress had a skirt, shirtwaist, tailored jacket and sometimes a waistcoat and a tie or bow. Sometimes a walking dress is hard to distinguish from a promenade dress. Promenade dress was more elaborate and while it usually had a shorter hem than for example carriage dress, it wasn't as short as for a walking dress and it might even involve a bit of trail. The things is promenade dress and walking dress probably had a lot of overlap.

Here's fashion plates showing promenade dress styles, first from 1896, second from 1898, both conveniently showing an elaborate dress and a tailored look that's easy to get mixed with a walking dress, and possibly would have been used as such in some cases.

Here's walking dresses shown in a picture from 1899 (note the early photoshop to make the waist smaller), a fashion plate from 1896 and a painting from 1897. Really the main difference is the hem of the skirt to the promenade dresses of tailored style.

Shirtwaist

I will mention on it's own shirtwaist too, since it highlights a lot of the class differences and how they showed. The shirtwaist, or blouse waist or sleeve shift, is a hard garment to pinpoint as it was used for many different purposes by different people. It was one of the first garments to be mass-produced and therefore very affordable. It was also loose and unfitted by nature and so easy to move in. For these reasons it was used with a practical skirt by working class and middle class women as casual wear. The outfit was sometimes used with a jacket similar in style to those of walking dresses, making it practically indistinguishable from a walking dress. Here's for example pictures of working women class women wearing shirtwaists at work and at town shopping (the other picture could be of middle class women too).

As tailored styles influenced by men's fashion became popular, so became shirtwaists. At the same time sports were becoming popular and sportswear was highly influenced by this tailored trend. Shirtwaist being light and loose was perfect for sports and was used by upper and middle classes for tennis, golf and cycling for example. (I'm working on a post about the history of tennis ensemble where I go deeper into this.) Because of it's very casual nature, it was not considered suitable for the upper classes in most situations outside sports. As seen above it was part of the walking dress for the upper class, but in that situation it was used under a jacket. Young fashionable progressive women, who were often called the New Woman, started using it in their morning dresses and then even casual day dresses.

Here's first a picture of tennis ensemble from latter half of 1890s, a picture of young women from 1898 and a fashion plate from 1898.

I have a pinterest board of primary source examples for Victorian fashion, where I've made a rough divide between different periods of the era and different types of dresses inside every period. It's not fully organized yet and at least for now the types of dresses are divided very roughly into day dresses, evening dresses, sports ensembles and toilette. Toilette is a vague enough term so I used it here to include basically any dress used exclusively at home. The categories are maybe not granular enough to be helpful for you here, but I'm linking it here in hopes it would be of some help.

[transthatfag]

redraw of a character assignment I had last year

[boycritter]

hate feeling like no one will take me seriously in academia !!! hate feeling like i will never ever fit in !!!!!

[mamawasatesttube]

theres a lot wrong with kryptonian society and culture but i gotta say they did at least one thing right and its the capes. everyone just wears capes, all the time. we could learn from them